always is everywhere

On 13 June 2025, the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) opens the international group exhibition always is everywhere engaging with themes of universality and boundlessness of consciousness. The exhibition is curated by Margit Säde.

always is everywhere is a meditative journey – a quiet reminder that consciousness is not tied to time, location, humans or other living organisms, but is the prerequisite of everything that exists.

The second project of EKKM’s 2025 season is a poetic attempt to perceive presence in everything and to celebrate it in all its totality. The curator Margit Säde writes in the accompanying text of the exhibition: “A plant does not think, yet it veers towards the light. A stone does not dream, yet it holds the warmth of the day. A cat’s purr is a sincere sign of a zest for life. Universal consciousness is everywhere and it is never-ending. That which exists always, can only be boundless“ The ten artists and one creative duo included in the exhibition invite us to look beyond species boundaries and to acknowledge the present moment from a more diverse perspective than that of the human eye.

The exhibition will end with a two-day symposium on 16 and 17 August, inviting ecologists, poets and artists to reflect on the exhibition themes. A more detailed timeline of the public programme will soon be published on the website of the museum (www.ekkm.ee).

Participating artists: Angela Maasalu, Helena Keskküla, Jonas Mekas, Maud van den Beuken, Nele Kurvits, Reto Pulfer, Sirkku Rosi, Uku Sepsivart, Vaim Sarv, Yvette Bathgate & Jake Shepherd, Zorica Zafirovska.

The exhibition will be enlivened by a summer-long programme that engages the audience regardless of age or language skills. The programme includes:

Zorica Zafirovska is taking part of the exhibition with storytelling, art & gardening workshops for children entitled Stories in the Wind — Kinder Garden!. The workshops are guided by Zorica Zafirovska and Anita Kodanik. Children aged 4-8+ are invited to listen, tell and draw stories together about plants, animals and other creatures or worlds yet to be discovered. Using a variety of art and gardening techniques, the workshops, led by the artist and helpers, encourage creativity, storytelling and encourage the imagination. No registration needed but you can let us know of your attendence via https://forms.gle/8jytFsGqJz2j9Tss8

Vaim Sarv will perform on three occasions during the exhibition. Oral Frictions is a freely improvised work of storytelling, song, and bodily noise music. It’s an ongoing rehearsal of old traditions of gathering and listening to spoken, sung words. Engaging with the limits of breath and body, the work draws on alternative vocal and somatic practices from the region. It’s about the entanglement of pleasure and pain, freedom and dispossession, land and labor. It’s hot and it’s dirty and it’s definitely ancestral terrain.

The greenhouse built in EKKM’s garden by the artist duo Yvette Bathgate & Jake Shepherd is not only about growing plants but about human relationships, a space created with care and love, and things made together with local practitioners. It is a space for gatherings, learning from each other and growing together, where each detail – the benches, the shelves and the ceramic plates and cups – manifest that relationships and carework are our most important support structure.